WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission has fined Texas Sen. Ted Cruz $35,000 for not properly reporting the source of about $1 million in loans taken out from major banks during his initial run for the Senate in 2012.

One of those groups, the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, on Friday announced the election commission's action, saying the fine served as a reminder that "candidates should take seriously their legal requirement to disclose where their campaign money comes from."

"In the homestretch of a high-profile election, voters were misled about Cruz's personal and campaign finances," said Tara Malloy, the center's senior director of appellate litigation and strategy, adding that proper disclosure "could have factored into voters' decision-making at the ballot box."

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said the agreed settlement with the FEC resolves the "filing mistake once and for all."

"As has repeatedly been reported, the loans were public at the time and fully disclosed on Senate ethics disclosures, but they weren't reported correctly on the FEC forms," she said.

Cruz, a Republican, in 2016 described the omission as an inadvertent mistake, calling the Times report a "stunning hit piece." He pointed out that while he failed to disclose the loans on campaign reports, he did list them on personal financial disclosure forms required by the U.S. Senate.

"This is not a serious violation," said Rick Tyler, the then-spokesman.

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The complaints centered on loans Cruz had taken from Goldman Sachs, where Cruz's wife worked, and Citibank for his 2012 Senate campaign. The cash infusion was described as having come from "personal funds," when it should've been clearly labeled as sourced from loans.

The discrepancy came as Cruz touted how he and his wife, Heidi, had agreed to "liquidate" their "entire net worth" and "put it into the campaign" for Senate.

The FEC, while dinging Cruz's campaign for the error, said that it didn't find the violations to be "knowing and willful." The commission also explained that there weren't sufficient facts to show Cruz's camp "intentionally failed to disclose the underlying sources."

Tom Benning. Tom covers the intersection of business and government in Washington.
He came to D.C. in 2016 from The News' Austin bureau. He has also previously worked in Dallas, covering everything from City Hall to transportation to former President George W. Bush. He is a graduate of the University of South Carolina.